Short abstract:

The workshop offers a platform to discuss ongoing demographic change and particularly fertility decline in industrialised societies in its relation to the general condition of modernity.

Long abstract:

Looking closer to the experience of diversity and mutuality expressed in the fundamental decision of getting or not getting a child means to focus on a complex indicator of a given society and its culture. How, it may be asked, the reproduction of generation is intertwined with social and cultural conditions?
The demographic change in industrialised societies in particular provides an opportunity to focus on the impact of modernity and to contribute from the anthropologist point of view to one of the major social changes the nations affected are faced with. The surprising connection of modernisation and globalisation with low fertility rates despite of general prosperity is in historical and comparative respects a singular and still not much understood phenomenon, with major consequences.
The workshop seeks papers, which will make a contribution towards an anthropology of modern demographic change. Participants are encouraged particularly:
- to address the effects of modernity and globalisation on demography, in particular low fertility, and conversely,
- to seek possible consequences for the interpretation of modernity
- to discuss theories and explanations as to refer to methodological questions
- to offer in particular case studies related to diverse cultural backgrounds